Roger Landes

Roger Landes, who has died aged 91, was a star of the Special Operations Executive (SOE) in wartime France. Between 1942 and 1944 his exploits around Bordeaux with the Scientist network saw him organise parachute drops and sabotage before escaping into Spain, returning to France and ultimately clashing with General de Gaulle. His undercover achievements earned him the Military Cross and bar.

Landes was born in France. His father was the grandson of a refugee from Russian Poland in 1848; his mother was Russian. They ran a jewellery business in Paris, which collapsed in the Depression. They moved to London, leaving Landes and one of his two brothers to finish their education. The boys also moved to London after the Munich crisis, and Landes, who had graduated from L'École des Beaux Arts, became a quantity surveyor for the London county council.

He was called up into the Royal Corps of Signals in March 1941. As he spoke French better than he spoke English, he was interviewed as a possible recruit for SOE. He jumped at the opportunity to go back to France, despite being warned that the chances of his returning alive were about evens. He was commissioned, underwent rigorous training on how to be a secret agent and, as he already knew the Morse code, was trained as a wireless operator.

This was one of the most dangerous SOE jobs in western Europe; by 1944 they had a life expectancy of about six weeks, so efficient were the Germans' direction-finding teams. Landes took the warnings seriously, and was never himself in Nazi hands, though he had several near squeaks.

On the last night of October 1942, he parachuted into France near Orleans, codenamed Aristide. He was to work around Bordeaux for the formidable Claude de Baissac, who ran the Scientist circuit there. After establishing several wireless sets that worked well, Landes had plenty to do, for the area was full of targets worth attacking, notably the port of Bordeaux itself, which the Germans were using for blockade-running to and from Japan.

The attached submarine base was too heavily guarded for SOE to make any mark on it, but the blockade-running ships were another matter - though one of the Scientist teams, armed with SOE's limpet mines and ready to strike, was surprised to see a blockade-runner from Japan sink in front of them. It had been attacked by similar mines laid by Royal Marine commandos, better known as the "Cockleshell heroes".

As well as sending and receiving reports, Landes' task was to arrange by wireless telegraphy with London all the parachute supply drops of war stores, a complex business. In nine months, he arranged 121 RAF drops.

Strictly, Roger was supposed to keep himself to himself. But he and de Baissac were too gregarious for that, and met often. De Baissac introduced Landes to his second-in-command, the far-right Colonel Grandclément, who nonetheless disapproved of the Vichy collaborationist leader Marshal Pétain.

However, when, in March 1943, de Baissac was flown to England for rest and re-briefing, the Gestapo picked up Grandclément and persuaded him to change sides to help them fight the Soviet menace.

When Grandclément went to call on a friend, a 50-year-old police inspector, Charles Corbin, Landes was there, along with Madame Corbin and their teenage daughter Ginette. Grandclément explained that he was going to tell the Germans where the resistance arms were stored. Landes reached for his pistol, but thought he ought not to shoot a man in the presence of ladies. Instead, he and his friends, on bicycles, moved about a third of the arms before Grandclément's German friends could reach them; Landes and Corbin then got out into Spain, walking through Andorra, and back to England.

SOE approved his action, secured him a Military Cross, and parachuted him back in on March 2-3, 1944 to set up a fresh circuit codenamed the Actor in the Bordelais. By the time de Gaulle's regional military director arrived, Landes had already got almost all the potential resisters left in the Bordelais organised to start work when the invasion began. Thereafter the two men worked closely, making life almost unbearable for the local Wehrmacht, which withdrew in August; Landes was awarded a bar to his Military Cross.

When de Gaulle went to Bordeaux in September he ordered Landes out of the country instantly. But the order led to a crowd of about 4,000 gathering outside Landes' hotel to demonstrate for the agent and against the general.

That October, Landes settled in north London and married Ginette Corbin, with whom he had a son. He remained in the army for a while, and then returned to the LCC architect's department before working for a chain of jewellers, retiring as chief buyer. Ginette died 25 years ago; his second wife, Margaret Laing, whom he married in 1990, and his son from his first marriage survive him.

Roger Landes, wartime secret agent, born December 16 1916; died July 15 2008